Nottingham Council follow up letter – Making 350 homeless

Follow up letter to Nottingham City Councillors regarding disastrous Selective Licensing that will force me into making 350 people homeless

Dear Rav & John,

Regarding your letter dated 2 March 2018.

You say you are not sure if I’m aware, but the Council undertook an extensive consultation. No I was not aware of the consultation nor were my many tenants and many landlord colleagues. I’m one of the biggest Housing Benefits landlords in the Nottingham and despite my many weekly conversations with your team, Selective Licensing was never mentioned. Why did you not contact HB tenants, probably the most important people that were and are going to be effected?
One of my colleagues turned up and Councillor Urquhart said she had to leave in 10mins-Was that wise?

Jon, IF the cost was less than £2pw, do you think we would be moaning?

Where do you get £2pw from?
What about the accreditation cost? Which in my case is £840 EVERY 3 years. (DASH is FREE everywhere else in the East Midlands apart from your City)
The Landlords so far that have had the DASH checks are getting bills of £700 upwards.
Add up the Licence fee £400.
Add the DASH fee £120.
Add the works fee £1000.
Add the Letting Agents set up fee £600.
Add the Letting Agents weekly 10% + VAT of rent fee £15.23 PER WEEK. £791 PER YEAR.
Whose paying for the floor plans you require, the DBS checks, the tenant referencing checks, the insurance loading, PAT testing, landlord training etc? Sort of makes your £2 a week claim very weak.

It will cost us over £3,000 per property in the first year. I may be exaggerating these figures, but you don’t rent a house thinking you never gonna’ spend a penny on it. You budget for ‘what could happen’.

Please sit down with us & discuss how we are going to do this for £2pw!!! And the conditions too. Worse than any Letting agent with the poshest tenants would ask.

You keep mentioning 2 part fee. It still got to be paid? Are you advocating finance?

Come look at my business and tell me what I can do with 70 houses, 350 people living in them. Which I manage perfectly well. Give me and my tenants a solution ‘cause I’ve already issued 10 section 21’s which I didn’t really want to do. But the clock is ticking.

You seem to reject everything. Time will tell. I have new boilers kitchens doors etc. Your fees will now take away from that budget. Does that not bother you?

You and David Hobbs seem to be copying the same letter. So you are losing me with your confusing comments which need to be discussed verbally. Real shame when homelessness is at stake.

And let me tell you for a fact, tenants from Housing Aid referrals Housing Benefit ARE more likely to cause damage. Do you want me to bring 10 Landlords with HB tenants to prove this?

I want Long term tenants, your policies and conditions will be getting them chucked out.

I’m speaking to Letting Agents this morning Your Move, big National Brand, showing them ALL YOUR conditions, they said anyone with more than a few houses cannot physically do all them conditions without a letting agent.

You go through the conditions, add up the time with each one, And times it by a fair number of houses, and tell me if I’ve got the time to do that?

To put houses with a Letting Agent are fees of £42,000 alone set up fees. This is on top of the £112,000 we mention. Where is the money coming from?

Bigger problem, Letting Agents won’t take my current HB tenants. What now?They have said with a few houses, yes, but not with the amount of houses I’ve got. Impossible.

Me and some of my colleagues with HB tenants would like a meeting with you. This is very serious & we need a meeting ugently.

I’m shocked that you have not even spoken to Housing Aid yet and understand the impact it’s having on them with Landlords going for eviction because of this Licensing.

I think you should back down now before it does get really messy with lots of evictions and do it on new tenancies.

You still get your Licensing.

Current tenants won’t be evicted.

Landlords won’t be telling the Media in 2 to 5 years Told you so.

You will be able to manage it better, as you ARE going to struggle doing all current properties.

You haven’t answered the question on Thumbturn locks, the tenants don’t want them ‘cause their kids will let themselves out and get knocked over on the road.

24 hour number?
What if tenants aren’t letting you in?

I’m providing basic good all essentials accommodation let’s say Travelodge. Your conditions now require us to run it like the Marriott. On the same money? And you think £2pw more will cover this? Come on, please.

Let me tell you what will happen. I and many Landlords will have to give rent increases to cover this increased cost. A lot of tenants won’t be able to pay this rent increase. We then give them the Section 21. They go homeless and get housed in bed and breakfast which costs THOUSANDS.

This will be the same for the HB tenants that tend to look after the property less, but I don’t have to fix their self-caused damage as not dangerous, but you will make me fix this, so they too will have to be evicted.

I will also call the Nottingham Post to cover and photo the first eviction because of Nottingham Selective Licensing.

Once these HB tenants go, I will do the property up, to the Marriott standard, and get the Marriott standard tenants in, as I have 3 Letting Agent tenants already and they are SUPER. Super posh Letting agent tenants that will be easier to comply with your conditions.
Is this judgement affecting anything you do?http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/242.html
We don’t have low housing demand in my areas.

The unanimous CoA decision was “…any selective licensing condition that requires the *provision of new facilities* or that *requires works*, which go *beyond normal non-structural repairs*, were imposed by a local authority in their discretion is unlawful.”

You haven’t answered these questions:

I understand you have 27000 homes.

Could you if asked, license all your home’s between April and August this year?

Would you have the funds to spend between £600 and £2000 per house all in 4 months?

EVERY house?

Could you with all your existing current tenants comply with all the conditions asked of selective Licensing?

Would you have the admin staff to do it?

Would you have the builders to do it?

If they you NCH can’t do this, how can I be expected to do this?

You probably have more staff ratio per houses than I do.

But I do manage my houses well as is, and all new boilers, new kitchens, doors, windows etc.

But if you couldn’t do what is asked of Selective Licensing, how can I be expected to?

I work 70 hours pw now on the tenants houses, admin, managing. I physically could not do or have the time to do these conditions. So I have to leave with a Letting Agent. Problem is, Letting Agent will not take these tenants. What do we do? When my houses come empty, all my future tenants was going be Letting Agent tenants, as I’ve been doing it 20 years & have no more energy to carry on with my current HB tenants, but for now the only option you are leaving me with is giving them Section 21’s.

What if my tenants have signed a tenancy, they’ve signed this tenancy, as long as don’t have to comply with any future Licensing scheme that current or future authority may bring in. Something like:
The tenant doesn’t give permission for anyone to enter property apart from the Landlord or The Gas safety man, unless anything is dangerous & workmen need to get in quick. Do we now have to break tenancy law?

Where is your answer to where my tenants have caused internal damage? Have we now got to fix these internal doors she has smashed? What do you think is going to happen when we have fixed them and she smashes them again?

Does she deserve to be homeless for that?

What are you on about offer from Housing Aid? You’ve lost me?

Housing Aid can no longer house their tenants with your conditions. I CANNOT believe you haven’t spoke to them yet to find this out.

As said, a meeting is urgently needed to avoid some disastrous homelessness and business’s going bust in the next 2-5 years.

Whilst I appreciate Mick your direct common sense approach, NCC will only react to specific legislative limits, not what you/anyone else thinks is best.

Pursue the Brown v Hyndburn Borough Council case with them as thumb-locks are NOT a requirement under existing legislation for a standard BTL, so cannot be made part of the licence conditions...same with many other conditions.

I can categorically state that by introduction of Selective Licensing is pushing some of the poor tenants out of many areas where this scheme is being brought in.
Tenants who are affected by this diabolical scheme are :
Low paid workers.
students.
anyone else who cannot afford to rent a whole house
These people can only afford to rent into a shared accommodation such as small HMOs. (up to two story buildings)
Selective and additional licensing is now limiting the number of people who can be accommodated in a decent size small HMOs,
To give you a real example, a two story house with 3 full size bedrooms upstairs , (No box room) and two bedrooms on the ground floor with a adequate size common room and a decent size Kitchen, with two bathrooms one on Ground floor and one on first floor.
Local council licensed it for 7 maximum occupants of any age, so this includes for example a baby of 1 year old or under!
So I have let it to 3 couples, plus one child, that is all 7 persons, and I still have two rooms empty that can house at least 4 more persons.
Further more, the number of small HMOs are now being treated as large HMOs thus requiring planning permission, this means more people will be forced out as planning applications will be rejected, thanks to Sajid Javid who is trying to fix housing crises, and he has not got frigging clue.

Expect much worst to come, and my Diabolical Award goes to Sir Robin Wales for introducing this stupid and diabolical scheme first ever in England in Newham. Is there any wonder Newham had more share of homeless persons. there you go Sir Robin Wales.

Also Lady Justice King's comments, paras. 78 and 79 "regulating management, use or occupation does not allow the application of conditions that regulate the condition and contents of a house or what facilities and equipment should be available".

Hello I am a Gainsborough Landlady who has properties in a Selective Licencing area and we can become members of Home Safe based in Doncaster. They maybe able to help you with the Nottingham Councils Selective Licencing unfair requests.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 07/03/2018 - 14:48mick im a landlord from nottingham and i also only deal with housing benefits i have over 20 properties and would like to know who to write to, that would make a possible 70 houses and families made homeless ,also if you could email me i would't mind meeting up with you to discuss this problem with you if at all possible my email is eastmidlandsstructures@ntlworld.com regards ts

There's more news, they've now put the price up to £780 & £520. Unbelievable!

Yeah, they make the Minister of Housing from someone who han't got a clue about housing. How can u walk from one dept to another with no experience? Just cause u went to Uni, u need to be expertise in your field. Proper Jobsworths the lot of 'em.

Ha ha yes David, how are we doing these floor plans? Without software? Time lots of it? Or paying for outside help?

Luke, I agree, I'm fighting a losing battle, They rang me yesterday & trying to get a meeting with them & some of us Landlords before 1 April.
He said they may concede on the floor plans, as my tenants have been writing in to MP saying What do we need floor plans for when we been here years?
But I've said floor plans is only 10% of the problem, we need to sit through all conditions & go through one by one & tick each one with time required & they may come to something like 4 hours per houses x number of houses. Where is the time coming from?
Luke, you have experience of this, email me ring me mick.roberts2011@hotmail.co.uk if u can give me any ammunition.

I was going to try Ombudsman complaint at later stage-I'll try anything-They've got some map drawing wrong, here is my text:

Who has drawn your map? Has a 3 year old drawn the map?

You’ve included Bestwood maybe ‘cause it’s had it’s troubles in the past. Bestwood Park hasn’t had it’s troubles.
We all know throughout the WHOLE of the UK, a good area finishes & the end house sometimes meets the not to good area.

Why has Holmewood crescent Bestwood Park £120k houses been included, but rest of Bestwood Park not? Holmewood Crescent has been included with the £80k houses from Bestwood.

I know what Licensing has done, drawn a map and din't know how to curve the line on the computer. So it was easier to just include those with the others. Holmewood is top little quiet U road. It doesn’t get any bother. It IS IN the good area. But your map-drawer thought it was quicker to include it rather than finding some proper person who can use map drawing on computer. So you should have done the map drawing by hand & scanned it.
I’ve got a 2k bill ‘cause u don’t know how to use a map.

Also within this mistaken 2 year olds map is another one of my house. I bought it 18 years ago, woman lived there 18 years, never had any trouble, she’s not got an asbo, nor has the house. It is next to the road where they mean’t to include Licensing.
This woman also has had no gas for over a year now. We can’t get the boiler serviced as she has no gas. Do I now get fined £30k for no boiler service? When tenants run out of gas, it sometimes gets worse as the gas company puts on daily standing charge, say £8 a month, so the longer they leave it, the worse it gets for them.

I’ve got another 2k bill ‘cause u don’t know how to use a map.
Both these houses, never any trouble in 18 years. From tenants, authorities, police etc.

Luke,

What if my tenants have signed a tenancy, they sign this tenancy, as long as don’t have to comply with any future Licensing scheme that current or future authority may bring in. Something like:

The tenant only signs this tenancy on condition that he or she shall not have to comply with any future Licensing scheme that current or future authority may bring in.
The tenant doesn’t give permission for anyone to enter property apart from the Landlord or The Gas safety man, unless anything is dangerous & workmen need to get in quick.
He was shocked on this yesterday, they seem amazed that some tenants actually like their Landlord & don't want Licensing in their house. He said Why can't we go in your house? I said U getting that wrong, it is THEIR HOME,
This is tenants text:

Im writing to inform you that im at high risk of being kicked out of my property due to Nottingham Council Selective Licensing. Im very happy with my landlord, whenever there is a repair needing to be done all I have to do is give him a call and its sorted within 24hours. Ive been it my landlord coming upto two years now and never had a problem, I do not want inspections in and around my home this is why i signed up with him and not a letting agency, we have a relationship based on trust, these checks are an invasion of privacy and in breach my human rights. I didnt sign up to this, I dont want anyone in my house apart from the gas service people and the repair companies. I do not agree with these terms as this will result in rent increase. If i was to be made homeless then that includes making my two children homeless who must i state are under the age of 5, they have lived here since being a young age and have settled into this home.

Why is this being forced on me?

Why do we need to have pictures of the floorplan when i have lived here long enough. If this was to go through to a letting agent and these dont take people with bad/no credit and are unable to get references, so the only thing they will do is issue us notice and where are we going to go expect a travelodge homeless in sheffield which is too far from schools and family.

Im happy that my boys have a happy stable home that your willing to take away from them, i struggle with money as it is without having to have my rent increased all the spare money i have goes on raising my children and your willing to take that away from them aswell.

I've pursued the case u mention with them, he seems to think it won't matter with them.

Yes Mike 100% the poorer tenants won't be allowed in these areas again, the Landlords now are scared of the conditions & will just avoid any future trouble when new tenants.

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